Title

Authors

First Advisor

Publisher

University of South Florida at St. Petersburg

ISSN

2572-4339

Document Type

Thesis

Language

en_US

Date Available

2018-05-17

Publication Date

2018

Date Issued

2018-05-01

Abstract

The intentional destruction of cultural sites during warfare provokes the question of why would armed actors invest significant resources into carrying out this activity, and what impact does it have in an anned conflict? This thesis identifies four main motivation types of intentional cultural destruction and how they may contribute to intensifYing a conflict. It hypothesizes that as intentional cultural destruction events increase in an armed conflict, so does the occurrence of battles, intensifYing conflict. To test its hypothesis, it utilizes the case studies of Syria and Yemen, conducting a S T A TA regression test for both. The Syrian case study resulted in a null hypothesis; However, a significant negative correlation between the occurrence of intentional cultural destruction events and battles arose for the Yemeni case study. This suggests that as battles decreased, intentional cultural destruction events increased, in the Yemeni case. While significant, many more case studies would need to be conducted, and possibly with alternative variables, to fully investigate intentional cultural destruction in anned conflict further.

Comments

A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the University Honors Program University of South Florida, St. Petersburg